THOMPSON Memorial Dimensions of Baptism 307
Hymns celebrating the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus frequently
either make the singers present to the event hymned, or make the event
contemporaneous with the singing.
'O Little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!...
The hopes and fears of all the years
are met in thee tonight'^11' Christ the Lord is risen today,
Alleluia!'^12This is not syntactical sloppiness, but memory allowing the past to be
present, yet as past.^13 The central act of Christian worship, the eucharist, is
done in memory of the Crucified, Risen and Ascended One.
That baptism is, no less than the eucharist, a Christian memorial act I
shall not seek to prove. It would be no original observation. The two rites,
James F. White notes, are one in their origin in God's love.^14 While in the
eucharist, believers continually remember and receive anew the grace won
through Christ's life, death and resurrection; these are realities to which
Christians are united through baptism.^15 In the early Church baptism and
first communion were both integral parts of a single rite of initiation. Thus
White defines the eucharist as the culminating act of Christian initiation
that is begun in baptism, and the only part of initiation that is repeated.^16
Both rites are media through which the Church remembers the work
of God. Leithart thus can refer to 'baptismal anamnesis', and James W.
- P. Brooks, 'O Little Town of Bethlehem', in W. Forbis (ed.), The Baptist Hymnal
(Nashville: Convention Press, 1991), hymn 86, emphasis mine. Cf. Wolterstorff, 'Re-
membrance', p. 126. - C. Wesley, 'Christ the Lord is Risen Today', in Forbis (ed.), hymn 159
(emphasis mine). Cf. Wolterstorff, 'Remembrance', p. 119. - D. Krell, Of Memory, Reminiscence, and Writing: On the Verge (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 14-15, calls this 'the ontological paradox of
memory'. - J.F. White, The Sacraments as God's Self-Giving (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1983), p. 34. - Cf. G. Wainwright, 'Renewing Worship: The Recovery of Classical Patterns',
Theology Today 48 (1991), pp. 45-55 (47); and Leithart, 'Modernity', p. 329. - White, Sacraments, p. 34. Cf. K. W. Noakes, 'From New Testament Times until
St Cyprian', in C. Jones, et al (eds.), The Study of Liturgy (London: SPCK, rev. edn,
1992), pp. 112-27 (118-20); and EJ. Yarnold, 'The Early Syrian Rites', and 'The Fourth
and Fifth Centuries', in Jones, et al. (eds.), Study, pp. 127-29 and 129-44, especially
p. 141.